In a whole fruit juice extractor such as disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,970,861; 5,992,311; 5,996,485; and 6,568,319, the disclosures which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety, a strainer tube is inserted within a juice manifold and associated with a fixed extractor cup that is supported on a cup bridge. An orifice tube is associated with each strainer tube and moveable by an orifice beam that supports each orifice tube. As the orifice beam is reciprocated, the orifice tube moves within the strainer tube, generates pressure, and forces juice out of the strainer tube into the juice manifold.
Typically, in most prior art juice extractors, the strainer tube has been loaded from the top of the juice manifold and secured by a nut from underneath the juice manifold. This design sometimes is problematic because the juice manifold is received in a cavity of the cup bridge, creating difficulties when replacing the strainer tube.
One proposal uses a single extractor cup, countertop citrus juicer as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,483,870, showing a cylindrical juice manifold and strainer tube. The juice manifold includes an internal thread to receive the strainer tube, which threads therein. This assembly, however, does not include adequate sealing. Also, the juice manifold is cylindrically shaped and useful only for a single juice extractor unit having only one moveable extractor cup and only one fixed extractor cup. It would not be applicable to a juice extractor with multiple extractor cups.